Case Number 16455

THE SKY CRAWLERS (BLU-RAY)

The Charge

Every day could be your last. Live life like there's no tomorrow.

Opening Statement

Based on the bestselling Japanese novels by Hiroshi Mori, The Sky
Crawlers is the latest introspective anime from director Mamoru Oshii
(Ghost in the Shell) and Production I.G, blending melancholic and
introspective puzzles on life, death, and war with stunningly crafted
retro-stylized dogfights and World War II-inspired design. Also, the enigmatic
plot will strike you in the face like a blackjack.

Facts of the Case

A group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren fight an endless
war between two multinational organizations. No one quite remembers how the war
was started or how long it has been going on, but they fight all the same. The
Kildren are genetically modified to never age, to remain as young teens for
their entire lives, and when one goes down in battle, another emerges.

A new recruit, Kannami arrives at a base reporting to duty, and is surprised
to receive a perfectly pristine plane. Normally, the planes are handed off by
the former pilots, but the previous occupant, Jinroh is nowhere to be found. He
is told by the new base commander, an enigmatic Kildren named Kusanagi, that
Jinroh had died, but no one will discuss it with him.

As Kannami and his squadron fly mission after mission, he begins to notice
the repetitive nature of his days and how new recruits who arrive bear striking
similarities to fallen comrades, but answer to different names. When Kannami
tries to remember his previous assignments, he finds he cannot remember...

The Evidence

Attempting to summarize and explain The Sky Crawlers is a challenge,
because people will love this film, and people will hate this film in equal
parts. Those who approach The Sky Crawlers as an action-oriented film
will no doubt fall into the second category. This is not to suggest the film
lacks excitement; only that the sky the pilots crawl through is your brain. Even
for a director known for his existential and complex films, The Sky
Crawlers is pretty out there; a perplexing blend of WWII-era designs and
dogfights mixed with introspective ruminations on death, memory, and the
repetitive nature of war. The Sky Crawlers is refreshingly unique, to say
the least, because there is literally nothing else like it. As an intellectual
exercise, it is undeniably fascinating, but its emotional tone is often
off-putting, distant, and alien -- an easy film to admire and respect, but a
tough film to love.

Many of the plot details in The Sky Crawlers are left deliberately
vague and enigmatic. The locale is vaguely European, vaguely 1940s, but nothing
is said as to their location or time period. The country is at endless war, but
nothing is said as to who the enemy really is or why the war continues. Details
are like memories here; some are extremely vivid and realistic, while others are
mere suggestions. As the film progresses, the emotional tone of the film shifts
and deconstructs, as the dreamlike repetition of the character's lives
eventually causes a shift, a break. As we unravel the plot, it curls back up
again on itself like an ouroboros. Scenes repeat themselves, and whether the
characters themselves notice is unclear. The film provokes an emotional response
from its audience very well, but it's difficult to express exactly what emotions
get provoked, or why. Anger, grief, disconcertment, and unease all come easily
when watching The Sky Crawlers, but you would be hard-pressed to justify
them.

Like most of the other pilots featured, the protagonist is a Kildren, a
peculiar subset of the population that, through genetic modification, does not
age. They are perpetual children, stuck in the body of adolescents, flying
endless missions in the sky. Why grow up when you are bound to die anyway? Can
they age, and simply opt not to, as one suggests in the film? Kannami realizes
his random assignment to the base is not quite as random as he may have thought;
people remark that he bears a similarity to the pilot he replaced, Jinroh, whose
fate is troubling and enigmatic. Other pilots fail to return from dangerous
missions, and new ones replace them that bear uncanny similarities to their
previous doppelgangers, despite having no memories of the events. Are these the
same people? Does it even matter? After all, there's a war to be fought. Is
death an escape? Is there more to being an adult than simply aging? Is there
more to being a kid than simply not? The divide between the Kildren and the
adults at times feels insurmountable, vast chasms of irreconcilable distance --
but try to qualify exactly why this is the case, and watch logic gets fuzzy.

This head-tripping philosophical exploration about the notion of war is at
the very heart of The Sky Crawlers, that war is an integral part of the
human psyche; we require it to counterbalance our desire for peace. Without the
one, the other withers and corrupts. The irony in the argument, of course, is
that this lesson is expressed by way of seemingly emotionless automatons, by
Kildren who do not age and maybe not die, at least not in the way we understand
death. Their plight is unsettling; despite their distance from each other, we
feel for their plight, their lack of understanding, their internal confusion and
their external obedience. This is all they know, and we come to know it
alongside them. Their destiny is in the air, to die in battle and then...what?
There are mysteries abound. Like much of Mamoru Oshii's work, we are aware of
the profundity and gravitas of the ideas being expressed to us, but are not
always fully aware of how best to interpret them. They baffle us like tidal
waves; we never quite capture the ocean, but we can get swept away and soaked by
it all the same. Slow-paced and dragging in its narrative, The Sky
Crawlers resonates like a bell in the heart and the mind in ways we do not
quite understand. This is not a film for those who require resolution or
closure.

The Sky Crawlers is visually one of the most striking and dynamic
animation films in recent memory, which is saying a lot considering the film's
director and production studio have themselves churned out some of the finest
animations in the world. The film can be stylistically divided into two parts:
scenes on the ground and scenes in the sky. Ground scenes feature a style
familiar to those who know the work of director Mamoru Oshii and Production I.G,
seamlessly blending lush hand-drawn animation and subtle computerized
backgrounds and color manipulation. Animation is fluid and lush, with
spectacular backdrops and illustrations and a simplistic yet detailed character
design. At first glance, the characters are almost statuesque and mute with
little detail in their mannerisms, almost doll-like; but nuances and complex
facial expressions quickly emerge. Tiny motions, tightening of jaws, narrowing
of eyes, small movements in hair all suggest a disgusting level of attention and
detail put into every single on-screen character.

As for the sky sequences, they are rendered in CGI, and simply incredible,
quite unlike anything the studio has undertaken in the past. Oshii has certainly
dabbled in melding the computer animated and the hand-drawn in new and exciting
ways for years, but The Sky Crawlers takes the style to a whole new,
almost impossible level of immersion. Planes dart and dive through the sky, the
camera twisting around in ways impossible with traditional animation. Though the
sequences could hardly be described as "realistic" (they are far too
stylized), it is true that if you are not paying attention, some sequences move
with such authentic fluidity that they almost pass for reality, impossible as
this particular reality might be. The entire experience is at once both stylized
and realistic; a fantastic juxtaposition of detail and artistic expression. If
nothing else, The Sky Crawlers is one of the most fascinating and
technically proficient animes in recent memory.

Presented in 1080p, there is not a single detrimental visual flaw in the
presentation of The Sky Crawlers that can be found. I have been awed by
the work of Production I.G in the past, but having never seen their work on
Blu-Ray before, I was unprepared. Black levels are crisp, edges are perfectly
rendered with no hint of distortion, no grain of any kind can be found, colors
are vibrant and saturated -- you name it, it's perfect. The incredible detail
and meticulous detail is perfectly rendered. I never thought I'd give a perfect
score for any category, but here we are. From an eye candy perspective, this may
be the best looking anime currently available on Blu-Ray.

Audio comes in both English and Japanese Dolby TrueHD 5.1 channels, and are
virtually identical save for the dialect. Dialogue is clear and strong in the
center channel and the environmental accuracy and placement of sonic items is
perfectly realized. Prop planes hum in the distance overhead, bullets howl
through the air, and raindrops fall convincingly. Bass response is strong but
balanced, never too aggressive. Equally as impressive (although harder to grade)
are the sequences where sound is entirely absent. The Sky Crawlers uses
silence quite effectively, expressing complex emotion and suggestion simply by
doing nothing at all. The score by Kenji Kawai is a somber mix of strings and
high symphonic voices, and more than a little reminiscent of his previous work
for Production I.G in the Ghost in the Shell series. The otaku in North
America may recognize some familiar Japanese voices at work here; Academy
Award-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) and Chiaki Kuriyama
(Kill Bill Vol. 1) lend their talents to the Japanese cast. For those
looking for more international options, a Portuguese TrueHD 5.1 and Spanish
Dolby Digital 5.1 track are also included.

In terms of supplements, we get basically the same as the standard DVD
version; a 30-minute feature, "Animation Research for The Sky
Crawlers" interviewing the director discussing the various influences
assembled to craft the look of the film, and a thirty minute feature "The
Sound Design and Animation of The Sky Crawlers" that depicts Oshii and his
crew traveling to California to create the sound at Skywalker Ranch. This is my
favorite feature of the bunch, if only to see the Ranch crew present Oshii with
a present of a T-shirt with a basset hound on it. The only Blu-Ray exclusive
extra is a 15-minute interview with director Mamoru Oshii discussing his
inspirations and themes in adapting The Sky Crawlers, which overlaps
slightly with the other material, but is still nice to have. The disc is also
BD-Live enabled, but I was unable to get the feature to work at the time of
review, possibly due to it being advance of the street date.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

It goes without saying that the elements in the story of The Sky
Crawlers that attracted director Mamoru Oshii to adapt it into a feature
animation are no doubt the very same elements that will hinder the film from
finding mainstream appeal. Remember, gentle reader; Oshii is a complex fellow
who delights in weaving complex notions of life, death, existence and memory
into every possible nook and cranny into his films. Also, basset hounds. Do not
think for a second that The Sky Crawlers will be any different.

Problem is, everything about the packaging of this Blu-Ray suggests an
action film, but nothing in The Sky Crawlers could be further from the
truth. This is an introspective, thought provoking and challenging meditation on
the futility of war, on the cyclical nature of combat and battle between man, of
memory and loss; a two-hour film where easily an hour of it is spent entirely in
silence. The Sky Crawlers masquerades as an adventure film full of
dogfighting and aerial battles, but these are window dressings at best, and
constitute barely 15 minutes of the film.

The worst thing, the absolute, most depressing, desperately painful thing
that can happen with The Sky Crawlers is for people to go into it looking
for action and adventure. This will lead to disaster, confusion, furrowed brows,
and, ultimately, rejection. Just like my prom all over again. The horror...

Closing Statement

Visually striking and technologically impressive, The Sky Crawlers is
a fantastic Blu-Ray title with a near-perfect technical presentation. As a film,
the story is more difficult to quantify, resisting attempts to understand it on
a purely surface level and instead demanding more emotional attachment from its
audience, more complex ruminations. Many would describe the film as needlessly
melancholy and confusing -- and they would be right. The Sky Crawlers is
an undeniably fascinating work all the same. A contradiction to be sure, but
that's kind of the point.

The Verdict

A thoroughly unique and stylistic adventure, The Sky Crawlers is
aces.